NlEVER IN MY YOUNGER DAYS
1
Was there ever a day younger than this—
the sky rinsed clear in its fresh blue eggshell.
My feet touch the new earth with perfect balance.
I greet the dogs on the path, especially the Goldens
who seem to catch my eye long before we meet,
gauge their gait, angle to intersect my path,
touch damp noses to my hand as we pass.
2
Nearby, a bullfrog brags of his deep voice
as two cottontails jump into sagebrush.
A red-winged blackbird dives low,
makes swift passes at my head,
wings cast shadows on the path.
Her babies nearby—how could she know
this monster would not take one?
3
Hunkered in the brush along the waterway,
sparrows, finches—a chorus, a din—
a generation of young singers
shine up their new voices.
Blackbirds sit as sentinels on high branches.
Exuberant with light, they feather off
into the weightless glitter of morning.
WARMING
Bragging of our early spring
I doffed layers this morning, wearing only two,
thinking like a bird with no need for extra down
and no thought that clouds might roll in from the hills.
Rushing out to claim the skies, I brushed aside
headlines that tell of collisions and spinouts
on snowy roads, the summit closed.
Soon flakes skitter across the windshield
show their icy core and shatter
my daydreams of sun on bare skin.
If I focus, really focus, can I raise the temperature
without the weather’s compliance? They say
it’s been done to climate, Kyoto treaty notwithstanding.
Forced to face the UN, I’d defend my protocol
in the company of other culprits
who hope that global warming means
just another summer day.
DEAREST FRESHNESS DEEP DOWN THINGS
- Gerard Manley Hopkins
in the cove
after gale-force winds ride the sky
unbridled, tossing limbs, rolling rocks
etching a fresh coastline
in the bamboo grove
that harbors the wind’s whistle
where rain-soaked roots sustain
their tenancy – deepen, thicken
in the wet forest
under a canopy of tall cedars
where errant raindrops, icy slivers
ping the cheek, quiver the lip
in the perfect hollow
of a tree’s trunk, I curl
in this hallowed place
close to the dear earth.
LIFE BENEATH
On the fence facing me, she looks
like a plump robin in the pale rose of winter sun on snow.
But she is not a robin at all as I bring her close
in the circle of my double lens;
she is all chest, dense with rows of billowed feathers
layered rust and white.
A turn reveals her telltale profile, the curved comma
of her upper beak—a hawk— probably sharp-shinned,
longing for a mouse or a small wintering bird.
She scans the snow for a sign, fence sitting,
watchful for life that exists beneath.
Swiftly, she lifts and swoops,
cleaves the clearing with her dark wings.
I stay – moved, unmoving – take in what I can
to slake my hunger.
© Copyright Irene D. Hays. All Rights Reserved.
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